A Civil War

by Claudio Pavone

  38 Apart from what has already been mentioned in previous pages, see the report by Paolo ‘for the Communist Federation of Savona’, 1 November 1944. (INSMLI, CLNAI, envelope 8, folder 2, subfolder 12).

  39 Pesce, Senza tregua, pp. 174–6.

  40 V. Ciaffi, ‘Colloquio davanti alla città (Annibale era ‘alle porte’)’, in Sempre Avanti!, 11 July 1948, cited in G. Quazza, ‘Tra cultura e politica: un latinista nel 1945–48’, in Rivista di storia contemporanea XII (1983), p. 438.

  41 Comment piece on the conference of the insurrectionary triumvirates held in November 1944, published in the 15 November 1944 northern edition of L’Unità, under the title ‘Serrare le file e vincere ogni difficoltà per la vittoria della insurrezione nazionale’.

  42 Report of 7 March 1945 (Le Brigate Garibaldi, vol. III, pp. 452–3).

  43 Letter from Giovanni to ‘Dear G.’, undated but soon after the Liberation of Rome (IG, Archivio PCI).

  44 On the Florence press, see Francovich, La Resistenza a Firenze, pp. 166, 182–4, 198–9.

  45 Circular from the Command of the 28th GAP brigade Mario Gordini, 15 July 1944, on the ‘functions of a political commissar’ (‘Funzioni del commissario politico’, IG, BG, 02309-12).

  46 ‘Colleghi della mensa, sveglia!’ and ‘Lottare per la nostra dignità’, Il Lavoratore della mensa, Turin, 22 December 1944. I base my remarks on the Barcelona barbers determined to smash the capitalist yoke on a conversation with Aldo Garosci.

  47 Marcenaro and Foa, Riprendere tempo, p. 103.

  48 See the exchange of letters between Giovana and Valiani, published in Il Movimento di liberazione in Italia 89 (October–December 1967), p. 126.

  49 These words appear in the Cuneo area GL proclamation of 29 April 1945; and see Bianco, Guerra partigiana, p. 147.

  50 ‘Prima di separaci’, in Lungo il Tanaro, newssheet of the 10th Alpine GL Division, May 1945 (quoted in De Luna, Storia del Partito d’Azione, pp. 299–300).

  51 Letters by Elli Voigt, 8 December 1944; Félicien Joly, 4 December 1941; Fernande Vorral, guillotined on 7 August 1944; and Henri Fertet, shot on 26 September 1943 (LRE, pp. 409, 289, 104, 318).

  52 Letter by Pietro Benedetti, shot by Polizia Africa Italiana firing squad at Rome’s Forte Bravetta on 29 April 1944. The PAI was one of many police squads in the service of the Italian Social Republic (LRE, pp. 515–16).

  53 Letter by Paolo Braccini, GL (LRI, p. 55).

  54 See T. Mann’s preface to LRE, p. xiv.

  55 Poster of the Piedmont regional union of the Action Party, directed ‘to the valorous partisans of the CVL’, undated but ‘after twenty months of bloody struggle’ (INSMLI, CLNAI, envelope 8, folder 12).

  56 G. Sorel, Reflections on Violence, p. 10.

  57 Letter by the university student Carlo Pizzorno, shot by the Fascists in Turin on 22 September 1944 (LRI, p. 186).

  58 The diary passage closes by recounting the visit made to Annalisa Rizzini (Anna Foa), the daughter born to Lisetta Giua and Vittorio Foa (Diario partigiano, p. 257, 25 December 1944).

  1 Meneghello, Bau-sète, pp. 28, 14.

  2 On the use of this image see Hirschman, Shifting Involvements p. 104. Note Falaschi’s comparison between the conclusions of the memoirs of Martini Mauri, Lazagna and Revelli in La Resistenza armata, pp. 32ff.

  3 Letter by Ulisse (the lawyer Plinio Corti) to ‘Dear Tom’, 22 December 1944 (INSMLI, CVL, envelope 93, folder 5, subfolder a).

  4 ‘Rubrica Gapista’, in Audacia, Modena, 28 March 1945.

  5 Pesce, Senza tregua, p. 135.

  6 France d’abord, 1 June 1944 (quoted in Michel, Shadow War, p. 319); Libérer et Fédérer, 14 July 1942.

  7 ‘La popolazione deve essere con noi’ (‘The population must be with us’), a document drawn up by Eros, general commissar of the Unified Command of the Garibaldi and Fiamme Verdi brigades in Reggio Emilia, 26 January 1945 (Le Brigate Garibaldi, vol. III, p. 291). See the rich portrait of Eros in Battaglia, Un uomo, pp. 98–9.

  8 ‘Ai Partigiani’, editorial of Lungo il Tanaro, April 1945.

  9 Circular of 3 May 1945, quoted in Giovana, Storia di una formazione partigiana, p. 378, which adds that ‘reread today, this passage seems to have been crowbarred into the document as a pre-emptive attempt at appeasing the men’. See the passage from the fourth issue of Giustizia e Libertà, June 1944, cited in ibid., p. 102.

  10 Testimony of a partisan in Venezia Giulia (Le Brigate Garibaldi, vol. III, p. 723). ‘Attenzione alla Guardia Bianca!’ (‘Beware the White Guard’) was a recurring motto, from as early as the clandestine Democrazia Internazionale, Rome, 3, undated.

  11 ‘Verbale del collettivo dei comandanti e commissari tenutosi in Codevigo alle ore 21 dell’8 maggio 1945’, on the demobilisation of the Gordini Brigade (ISRR, catalogue 2, CXXVI, e, 25).

  12 Testimony of Bruno Zenoni, in Portelli, Biografia di una città, p. 288.

  13 ‘Relazione sulle formazioni e azioni dei guastatori’, signed ‘Gino’, Vicenza zone, undated (September 1944?) (IG, BG, 09322).

  14 Letter from the Milan centre to the Rome centre, 10 December 1943 (IG, Archivio PCI).

  15 For Parri, see Intervista sulla guerra partigiana, the above-cited interview given to L. La Malfa Calogero and M. V. de Filippis; for Foa, see ‘Commento al programma del partito d’azione’(commenting on the Action Party’s ‘sixteen points’) in Carocci, La Resistenza italiana, p. 186.

  16 Quazza, Resistenza e storia d’Italia, p. 339.

  17 Quazza (ibid., p. 342), making reference to the works of Kogan and Delzell, speaks of an arms consignment that was only 60 percent complete. The large quantity of weapons abducted from the Allies by the end of September – ‘215,000 rifles, 12,000 sub-machine-guns, 5,000 machine-guns, 760 anti-tank weapons, 217 cannon, twelve armoured cars, but only 5,000 pistols’ – has been taken as a measure of the strength the Resistance achieved (Ginsborg, A History of Contemporary Italy, p. 70, drawing on the figures supplied in C. R. S. Harris, Allied Military Administration of Italy 1943–45, H.M. Stationery Office, London 1957, p. 358). L. Meneghello described the matter of his own sten-gun as indicative of the post-war climate (Bau-sète, pp. 49–50). According to some of the testimonies collected by Portelli in Biografia di una città, the prudent silence of the early years was replaced with an arrogant claim of right. Mario Filipponi spoke, for example, of the ‘tonnes’ of arms that had been hidden, speaking of a federation secretary who says, ‘It will not be today, but within a year, five years, we will have to take up arms’ (p. 299). The most energetic points of the reaction to the attempt on Togliatti’s life – Genoa, Piombino – were also seen in this light.

  18 Testimony of Valente Tognarini, in R. Pincelli, K. Sonetti and S. Taccola, ‘Coscienza e soggettività dentro una città fabbrica: Piombino 1944–1956’, in C. Bermani and F. Coggiola, eds, Memoria operaia e nuova composizione di classe, Milan: Istituto Ernesto de Martino, 1986, p. 240.

  19 See ‘Relazione politica del Comando della Sezione Tremezzina al Comando della 52o brigata Clerici’, 13 May 1945 (IG, BG, 01115).

  20 On those who went back to the mountains, see E. Piscitelli, Da Parri a De Gasperi, Milan: Feltrinelli, 1975, pp. 168–75.

  21 On the Allies’ perspectives with regard to enrolling people into the Italian armed forces ‘within the agreed limits’, see ‘Piano per I patrioti del N.O. dell’Italia’, drawn up by the Local Government Subcommission of the Civil Affairs Section of the Allied Commission HQ, 7 April (INSMLI, CVL, envelope 94, folder 7).

  22 See Lazagna, Ponte rotto, p. 156.

  23 Testimony of Liborio Dottore, in Bravo and Jalla, La vita offesa, p. 364. In the Lager, this deportee had thought of ‘Italy with a capital I’.

  24 Testimony of Claudio Locci, in Portelli, Biografia di una città, p. 304.

  25 Bernardo, Il momento buono, p. 108.

  26 Cicchetti, Il campo giusto, p. 264.

  27 See G. Grassi, ‘Les Archives de la Résistance italienne: sources documentaires et histoire’,
in La mémoire de la seconde guerre mondiale, pp. 5–21; Pavone, Appunti sul problema dei reduci; A. Bistarelli, ‘Sconfitti due volte. Le associazioni dei reduci di Salò’, in Legnani and Vendramini, Guerra, guerra di liberazione, guerra civile, pp. 391–400.

  28 ‘Verbale del collettivo dei comandanti e commissari tenutosi in Codevigo alle ore 21 dell’8 maggio 1945’, (ISRR, catalogue 2, CXXVI, e, 25)

  29 Lazagna, Ponte rotto, p. 291.

  30 Bernardo, Il momento buono, p. 275.

  31 Artom, Diari, p. 124 (16 December 1943).

  32 The lawyer Franco Bartoli Avveduti, active with the Garibaldi Brigades in the Barge area. See ibid., p. 92 (28 November 1943).

  33 See his report ‘to the PSIUP secretariat for central/northern Italy’, June 1944, cited Salvati, Il Psiup Alta Italia, p. 65.

  34 Bianco, Guerra partigiana, p. 65. Bianco was evidently referring to the ‘Trenchocracy’ of which Mussolini had spoken in ‘Trincerocrazia’, Il Popolo d’Italia, back on 15 December 1917, in which he had argued that the veterans of the trenches would be the aristocracy of tomorrow (see R. De Felice, Mussolini il rivoluzionario, Turin: Einaudi, 1965, p. 403).

  35 Mila, Bilancio della guerra partigiana, p. 418.

  36 Associazione Nazionale Partigiani d’Italia (Communist in tendency), Federazione Italiana Associazioni Partigiane (secular third force), Federazione Volontari della Libertà (Catholic).

  37 Calvino, Tante storie che abbiamo dimenticato.

  38 It has been written, with reference to the whole European Resistance experience, that ‘the Resistance marked domestic, national life more than international relations, more the resistants themselves than the politics of their countries’ (Michel, ‘Gli Alleati e la Resistenza in Europa’, p. 94). Note also an English historian’s remarks concerning Italy: ‘It was the Resistance, more than Fascism, that decisively weakened some of the constitutive elements of Italy’s ancien régime’. T. Mason, ‘Moderno, modernità, modernizzazione: un montaggio’, in Movimento operaio e socialista, new series X: 1–2 (January–August 1987), p. 55.

  39 Augustinus (Paolo Faraggiana), ‘Seppellisco i ricordi’, in La Verità II (24 June 1946), p. 13.

  40 ‘Questi partigiani’ (unsigned), La Verità II (24 June 1946), p. 13.

  41 Mazzantini, A cercar la bella morte, pp. 298–9.

  42 P. Drieu La Rochelle, Secret Journal and other Writings, New York: Howard Fertig, New York, 1973, p. 72.

  43 Abrams, ‘Rites de passage’, p. 179. As regards left-wing circles, Basso and La Malfa were born in 1903, Lombardi in 1901, Longo in 1900, Morandi in 1902, Pajetta in 1911, Rossi-Doria in 1905, Secchia in 1903, and Sereni in 1907. The main leaders were not much older: Nenni was born in 1891, Parri in 1890 and Togliatti in 1893. These chiefs’ relative youth was probably one of the causes of the slow turnover of political and trade union leaderships.

  44 Pietro Marcenaro in Marcenaro and Foa, Riprendere tempo, p. 85.

  45 C. Levi, L’Orologio, Turin: Einaudi, 1950, p. 167. This is the description of the press conference Parri held at the Viminale after the resignation of his government.

  46 Hughes, United States and Italy, p. 139.

  47 I keenly remember this, but have not been able to locate the text of the broadcast in the BBC’s Written Archives.

  48 On the Auschwitz–Hiroshima link, see the series of reflections, collected under the title ‘La fine del mondo come gesto tecnico della mano dell’uomo’, in E. de Martino, La fine del mondo, Turin: Einaudi, 1977, p. 236 (see also pp. 475–6, 630, 638).

  Chronology

  1918: First World War ends; implementation of the Treaty of London (1915) denied by Wilson; myth of the ‘mutilated victory’ born.

  1919 (23 March): Mussolini convenes the Fasci di combattimento in Piazza San Sepolcro in Milan.

  1919–1922: Fascist violence in cities and countryside.

  1921 (January): Formation of the PCI (Communist Party of Italy) in Livorno.

  1922 (October): Mussolini threatens to ‘March on Rome’.

  1922 (28 October): King Victor Emmanuel III invites Mussolini to form a government.

  1923: Fascist squadristi transformed into MVSN (Voluntary Militia for National Security).

  1924 (May–June): Reform socialist deputy Giacomo Matteotti denounces Fascist electoral fraud and violence; his assassination precipitates the ‘Matteotti crisis’ and the Aventine Secession.

  1925 (3 January): In a speech before the Chamber of Deputies, Mussolini takes full responsibility for the Matteotti affair and challenges his opponents to remove him from office; King Victor Emmanuel III refuses to ask for his resignation; ‘Matteotti crisis’ is overcome; beginnings of full dictatorship. Fuorusciti begin life in exile.

  1926: Promulgation of Exceptional Laws (outlawing freedom of the press, association, political parties) effectively ends liberal parliamentary system in Italy and destroys the legal anti-Fascist opposition. Regime inaugurates the Special Tribunal for the Defence of the State and OVRA (secret police).

  1929 (August): Justice and Liberty founded in Paris by Carlo Rosselli; establishes cells in northern and central Italy.

  1935–36: Ethiopian War.

  1936–39: Italian Fascist and anti-Fascist intervention in the Spanish Civil War.

  1937 (27 April): Antonio Gramsci dies after years of jail; (9 June) Rosselli brothers assassinated in France.

  1939 (September): Nazi Germany invades Poland; Second World War begins; Mussolini delays joining his Axis partner.

  1940 (10 June): With the fall of France imminent on the anniversary of Matteotti assassination, Mussolini declares war on France and Britain.

  1940–43: Military debacles in Greece, Albania, North Africa, Russia.

  1943–45: Civil war in Italy.

  1943 (9–10 July): Allied troops land in Sicily.

  1943 (25 July): Fascist Grand Council votes ‘no confidence’ in Mussolini, who is removed from office by the king; Marshal Pietro Badoglio is named prime minister and announces via radio that ‘the war continues’.

  1943 (8 September): Marshal Badoglio announces via radio that General Castellano, representing Italy in Cassibile, Sicily, has signed an armistice with the Allies who will thereafter accept the country as a ‘co-belligerent’; the next day the CLN is formed. German divisions pour into Italy via the Brenner Pass. Hitler, outraged by Italy’s ‘betrayal’, demands the country be treated as occupied territory.

  Anglo-American troops approach Salerno and Taranto. German Field Marshall Rommel is charged with occupying Italy and disarming the Italian Army in the north. Field Marshall Kesselring is responsible for the central and southern part of Italy; he quickly controls the area around Rome and is charged with halting the Allied advance at Salerno.

  1943 (12 September): Benito Mussolini, arrested by Badoglio government and imprisoned first on the island of Ventotene, is freed without resistance from a makeshift prison on the Gran Sasso in Abruzzo by German paratroopers. In Germany, he is charged by Hitler with creating the Repubblica Sociale Italiana (RSI), in effect a puppet regime, located near Salò, hence the name Salò Republic.

  1943 (19 September): First military encounters between partisans and Germans. The village of Boves in the province of Cuneo is burned to the ground by the Germans. The mayor and parish priest, along with dozens of others, are burned alive. A week later there is a massacre of Jews at Meina on Lake Maggiore. The two events signal the beginning of Nazi terror on Italian soil.

  1943 (27 September): Outbreak of the so-called ‘Four Days of Naples’ (the first civilian uprising against Nazi occupation in Europe.) Allies establish a beachhead at Salerno while Kesselring retreats slightly to Montecassino. At the private residence of Mussolini in Rocca delle Caminate in the province of Forlì, the first meeting of the new fascist government. Rodolfo Graziani is named minister of defence.

  1943 (9 November): A draft notice appears in all newspapers for four years of conscripts. Approximately a minority of 50,000 answers the call, most are sent
to Germany for labour (with men captured after 8 September) or enrolled in four divisions under German command.

  1943 (20 November): Workers’ demonstrations in Turin; Fiat factory workers on strike. Germans name General Zimmerman to stamp out the demonstrations.

  1944 (8 January): Verona Trial: Count Galeazzo Ciano (Mussolini’s son-in-law and former foreign minister) is charged with treason for having voted against the Duce in July 1943. He and others are sentenced to death.

  1944 (24 March): Fosse Ardeatine massacre.

  1944 (2 April): Trial in Turin against General Giuseppe Perotti and his colleagues in the partisan Piedmontese Military Command captured by the Fascists. Condemned to death, they are shot at Martinetto. Period of greatest repression against the anti-Fascist Resistance. Nazi-Fascist terror against wide swaths of population in northern and central Italy.

  Palmiro Togliatti, recently returned from the Soviet Union, in an interview in L’Unità, the organ of the PCI, issues the so-called ‘svolta di Salerno’, a call for national unity and the expulsion of the Germans and the defeat of the Fascists before any political revolution or institutional reform.

  1944 (23 April): Partisans kill philosopher Giovanni Gentile (former minister of education in the Fascist regime) in Florence.

  1944 (4 June): Allies enter Rome. While there is general jubilation and the Allies are greeted warmly, there is no popular insurrection against the Germans. The Holy See urges restraint and counsels against a popular uprising.

  1944 (8 June): Political crisis forces Badoglio to resign; he is replaced by the moderate socialist Ivanoe Bonomi.

  1944 (16 July): Battle for Florence begins; city is liberated on 10 August. The retreating Germans destroy all bridges over the Arno River, except the Ponte Vecchio.

  1944 (15 August): The Allies land in southern France, forcing the Germans to defend the north-west part of the country. Partisans fight Germans fiercely for control of the Alpine passes. In retreat from Tuscany, German Wehrmacht and SS engage in scorched-earth policy; in Marzabotto they execute 1,830 civilians.

  1944 (8 September): Partisans liberate Domodossola and form one of the first short-lived independent republics.